XM MLB Home Plate new air shifts for Rob Dibble and Jim Bowden

As of Saturday, 2/13, these programming changes are not noted on the xmradio.com/mlbhomeplate website. Dibble is still listed as 4-6pm. The notations I originally linked to on the post above are no longer there. I was able to find one XM link today mentioning Dibble's 7-10am shift for Tuesday, 2/16, so I changed the link for him. So far I haven't found a new listing for Bowden's 4-7pm show.

Scotts offers fans lawn seed from 5 ballparks

First 5 ballparks to be available:

The Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ballpark, Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park, and St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium.

1/30/10: "The Scotts Miracle Grow Company and Major League Baseball Properties (MLBP) have teamed up to offer fans a season opener in their own backyards. ...Scotts, a long-established company in lawn and garden products, will be known as the “Official Lawn Care Company of Major League Baseball.”...

Fans will now be able to pitch grass seed blends formulated for major league ballparks at their home base address and be the first on the block with a major-league lawn.

Scotts developed grass seed blends in consultation with the director of grounds at each selected ballpark. Seed is specific to the climate and hardiness zone of each ballpark.

By opening day of the 2010 baseball season grass seed blends will debut for fans of five teams:

the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ballpark, Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park, and St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium."...

The next section references a 'carbon footprint' as part of everyday care of the environment. These are two separate issues that have recently been presented as one. Environmental awareness should be the normal course of events. We obviously need to care for our air, water, and land.

(continuing): "The Carbon Footprint and Your Ballpark Lawn

"How will Scotts latest pitch on lawns influence the environment? At a time when the great American lawn has been benched from the lineup of environmentally correct landscape practices for guzzling water, contaminating groundwater and streams with toxic fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, and polluting the air from gas-powered mowers, can fans rally its comeback?...

However, given the breadth of information available on grasses and well-managed lawns, eager and informed baseball fans could become the team to watch at home plate.

Gas-powered mowers counteract the carbon sequestering work of grass since they have their bases loaded with emissions like hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and particulates. A reel mower is the only mower leaving no carbon footprint."...

Another radio tower destroyed by sabotage, now NE Georgia

HARTWELL - "WLHR in Hartwell lost its tower early Saturday when the 284-foot structure fell to the ground."...
It is believed to be the work of vandals.
"While it was raining at the time and the area was under a winter storm warning, there

was no ice accumulation on the tower, according to the station's co-owner, Art Sutton.

"We believe one of the guy-wire sections was deliberately cut which resulted in the tower falling completely over away from the guy-wires cut,” Sutton said. “There was no ice on the tower. The winds were not very strong. This was a deliberate case of sabotage based on the experience I've gained about radio station towers over the 33 years I've been in the business. If a tower collapses due to wind or the weight of excessive ice, it will collapse upon itself near the base of the tower. It will not fall over in one piece.....

Sutton said that the deliberate destruction of a radio station transmitter tower is considered a federal offense because stations are licensed by the Federal Communications Commission.

WLHR is owned by Georgia-Carolina Radiocasting Companies, which operates 13 radio stations in Northeast Georgia, Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina." AccessNorthGa.com, via RadioDailyNews

They say the promo disguises the host's voice a bit but that it sounds like Rob Dibble (who has been anchoring an afternoon drive shift on the channel for quite awhile). I tuned in to hear the promo, and it does indeed sound like Rob Dibble.

I wondered if Dibble was going to be with the Washington Nationals again this year, but can't find anything about it. I did notice the Nats' Fan Fest today, 1/31, says Tim Kurkjian, "baseball television analyst" will be on hand. Whether that means anything about the upcoming season I don't know.

Mr. Nutting, the only person in the meeting to comment on it, was adamant that no serious discussion about a sale had taken place. And he firmly reiterated that the Pirates are not for sale. ...

"Honestly, I'm not sure there's a situation to describe," Mr. Nutting said last night when asked about the meeting. ..."But I think the simplest way to say this is that there never has been a substantive or formal offer for the team. The team is not for sale."

According to sources on the Penguins side, the meeting happened four months ago at the Penguins' front-office headquarters in Chatham Center, Uptown. Mr. Lemieux, Mr. Burkle and Mr. Nutting were present, and the

intent of the meeting was for the Penguins owners to offer to buy the Pirates. Mr. Burkle made a financial offer."...

Time is now for Tigers baseball in Connecticut

"Hooray! We have a baseball team. Well, sort of.
Thursday’s announcement of the yet-to-be-approved relocation of the Oneonta (N.Y.) Tigers to Norwich for this summer is a great start. But the problem is the process of getting the team here was so drawn out that

Why would the Washington Post cry that there's a "wealth of scientific evidence" to support (man-made) climate change (actually they leave out the words "man made" in this article, allowing a reader to think any kind of climate change for any reason is enough to turn this country, its citizens, their finite efforts and time over to a bunch of equatorial dictators, unaccountable UN grifters and billionaire hedge fund scam artists)

This should have had enormous impact on the Copenhagen summit and every day since. Did the Washington Post make this scandal front page news? Could this not be considered a "wealth of evidence" of which citizens should be made aware? At the very least, if the Washington Post is truly concerned about the earth's atmosphere, informing the world of this fraud might have caused some to stay home

instead of spewing tons of carbon into the atmosphere with harmful jet travel.

The Washington Post's only concern was that the public's perception of colder than usual weather might make it harder for Obama to pass global warming related legislation. I am curious why the Washington Post is considered anything other than a bulky public relations newsletter. ed.

Randy Levine, others to bring Yankee MLB trophy to Asia

Yankee executives and the MLB World Series trophy will travel to Tokyo, Beijing, and Hong Kong on a 6 day tour. The trip will include talks with the Communist Chinese as part of an ongoing "cooperation agreement" the Yankees have with them.

"The Major League Baseball championship trophy will accompany a delegation of Yankees executives, including team president Randy Levine and general manager Brian Cashman, who will arrive at Tokyo's Narita Airport on Sunday.

It will be displayed on Monday at the MLB Cafe in Tokyo alongside the Yomiuri Giants' 2009 Japan Series championship trophy.

The trophy will be displayed on Wednesday at Beijing's New World Department Store, and on Friday in Hong Kong at New World's recently-opened K11 mall.

Mad Dog hosts Turner Classic Movies' Robert Osborne

Today in the 3pm hour of his Sirius XM144 show, Mad Dog and TCM's host Robert Osborne discuss favorite movies and the upcoming '31 Days of Oscar' to begin February 1 on TCM. Topics like this between Mike and Chris were always fascinating and something that will never be replaced. Osborne said he lives in New York and travels to Atlanta once a week to tape a batch of intros, interviews, whatever needs doing.

In conversation Dog said how much he liked "A Place in the Sun," and Osborne said that was his favorite movie. Among films he might take to a desert island, Osborne listed Sunset Blvd., Singin' in the Rain, The Third Man, and North by Northwest. Best actors, Spencer Tracy, DeNiro, Brando, Bogart. Dog asked him about Pacino, and Osborne agreed he's one of the greats. But said both he and DeNiro have done too many cheesy movies in recent years taking a bit from their overall image. Osborne's list of best actresses, Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Katharine Hepburn, and Greta Garbo.

Dog asked who was the most underrated actor, Osborne said Jeff Bridges and that he's starting to get more credit now. Dog mentioned Olivia deHavilland and Osborne said she's doing quite well, age 94, living in a townhouse in Paris. Dog mentions Teresa Wright as one of the greats, Osborne agrees and they note she passed away a few years ago. Dog says she lived in Connecticut and was a big Yankee fan.

She did play Lou Gehrig's wife in Pride of the Yankees in 1942 and received an Oscar nomination for it. According to a Washington Post article, it seems her conversion to Yankee fandom occurred in 1998. Because of her role in the Lou Gehrig film, she was invited to throw out a ceremonial first pitch at the stadium. "It was Ms. Wright's first visit to the stadium and sparked an interest in baseball -- "it was as if she was possessed," her daughter said --"...

Dawson played his first 10 full seasons in Montreal compared with six with the Cubs. He had his best season in Chicago, winning the National League Most Valuable Player award in 1987.

“I know the difference in the 10 to 6 years probably was something of a consideration on their part,” Dawson told WMVP....

Dawson also told the radio station that he has considered wearing a Cubs hat during his acceptance speech as a way to acknowledge those fans.

“I don’t want to do anything that might be an embarrassment to someone or show someone up, that’s not my character,” Dawson said. “But there will be some way I will try to acknowledge the Cubs fans to show just how important they were to me.

I did think about at some point in time during the speech putting a Cubs cap on, but I don’t know if that’s appropriate.”"

Included in the Monday night series will be Game 4 of the 1970 World Series, Tom Browning's perfect game, the clinching 1976 NLCS game vs. Philadelphia, Tom Seaver's no-hitter vs. St. Louis from 1978, the 1985 game in which Pete Rose breaks the all-time hit record, and Game 7 of the memorable 1975 World Series.

It's too bad that the rest of the country can't enjoy these, especially with the hometown flavor of "Marty and Joe on Reds radio".

Here is a regional network producing this, while the nationally available ESPN Classic sticks us with poker, bowling, boxing, and probably tiddly winks in prime time."

from Dave Kohl, Radio Recordings, via RadioDailyNews

(I have actually seen a few old Yankee games on tv with the radio team's voices, but not too often. Not often enough anyway). susan

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

SEC reinvents itself, now a global warming pressure group

Of interest, 1/27/10 after Obama's speech, Mary Kissel of the Asia Wall St. Journal said the US White House and Australia are the only places that still buy into (man caused) climate change.

Useless at protecting Americans against frauds like Bernie Madoff, the Security and Exchange Commission turns to the proven fraud of global warming and its relentless profiteers. It plans to force US companies to show changes they are making to deal with (non-existent) global warming.

Two US Representatives wrote to SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro today (1/26) to address this change in direction:

"“We note with interest that the Securities and Exchange Commission evidently has concluded that, having

9/17/07, Global Warming enforcement group aims at Security and Exchange Commission: ""The SEC exists to make sure that investors have the information that they need to make smart decisions," said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a group that promotes environmental standards among private companies. Ceres and the Calvert Group, an asset management firm, said in a January report that more than half of the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index "are doing a poor job of disclosing climate change risk."...

Monday, January 25, 2010

Ben Fong-Torres explains radio

"Radio is fickle: It's wonderful, and it's terrible. It's kind and it's cruel. It's like family, a lifelong part of much of your day and night, and of your best and worst memories. And yet it acts strange, goes through changes, embracing you one minute, rejecting you the next.

Radio values its listeners, draws them in with more music or the biggest stars. It nurtures them with personalities, contests and public events. And then, as those listeners mature, it dismisses them. It changes formats. It disappears. "...

Don Zimmer's big league career began in 1954 with the Brooklyn Dodgers:

""When you hit .258 lifetime you're not asked to give to many speeches."
Former Yankees bench coach Don Zimmer, who was presented with the William J. Slocum/Jack Lang award for long and meritorious service."...

by developing nations. Photo above described as Bangladesh 'Climate Refugees' victims of industrialized nations appeared in press during Copenhagen Climate Summit.

Statements made by Obama, Miliband, Brown all reflected conclusion that disasters were increasing due to global warming and/or climate change. The UN report was again based on unpublished, unsubstantiated statements, per TimesOnline UK:

"THE United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters

It was central to discussions at last month's Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion (£62 billion) from the

rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions.

Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change minister, has suggested British and overseas floods — such as those in Bangladesh in 2007 — could be linked to global warming.

Barack Obama, the US president, said last autumn: "More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent."

Last month Gordon Brown, the prime minister, told the Commons that the financial agreement at Copenhagen "must address the great injustice that . . . those hit first and hardest by climate change are those that have done least harm".

The latest criticism of the IPCC comes a week after reports in The Sunday Times forced it to retract claims in its benchmark 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers would be largely melted by 2035. It turned out that the bogus claim had been lifted from a news report published in 1999 by New Scientist magazine.

The new controversy also goes back to the IPCC's 2007 report in which a separate section warned that the world had "suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s".

"One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend."

The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim

When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."

It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),

did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action....

Dating from 2004, Schoeberl strong armed colleagues at NASA to an estimated $200,000 dollars in no-bid contracts to his wife's company. He admitted hiding some contracts and trying to convince others at NASA to go along with him.

From Washington Post Breaking News blog account of the charge:

"This month (9/09), as part of an investigation run through the NASA inspector general's office, authorities searched the couple's home and seized computer equipment and several cellphones and digital cameras. Authorities also seized documents linked to Animated Earth, including bank records and e-mails that mention the company.

Gumbel lumping Bagwell with McGwire stirs Astros fans

Bryant Gumbel created something of a stir among Astros fans with his comments regarding Jeff Bagwell during Tuesday’s episode of Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel on HBO. Gumbel declined a request to elaborate on his closing editorial, which

At the end of an “open letter” to “baseball’s usual suspects,” Gumbel encouraged Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro to learn a lesson from McGwire’s “phony non-apology.”

“On behalf of all fans, do us a favor. If and when you’re ready to come clean,don’t insult us with talk of how much of what you did was God-given and how much was chemically induced,” Gumbel said.

“Let us figure that out, OK? And don’t play us for idiots. Spare us the lies about talking ‘roids for health reasons. We’re all grown-ups. You took stuff for the same reason most of us break or bend rules.

It also sets up a process by which satellite companies can appeal to the FCC for help in similar situations.

Dish Network...a 14 million-subscriber satellite broadcaster based in Colorado, called the FCC’s vote a double victory for consumers.

“First, sports fans in Philadelphia and San Diego will soon have a choice of pay-TV providers; second, consumers can no longer be held hostage during a contract dispute between cable programmers and video distributors,” the company said in a statement.

The largest satellite broadcaster, El Segundo-based DirecTV, is majority owned by John Malone and other investors in his Liberty Media Corp. It has 18 million subscribers.

Under 18-year-old rules, programming owners could refuse to let the satellite companies carry regional channels if they were delivered exclusively by cable — what became known as the “terrestrial loophole.”

In Philadelphia, that meant local cable giant Comcast Corp. could sell its local Comcast Sportsnet programming — which includes game coverage of Philadelphia pro hockey and basketball franchises, plus other sports — to be carried by Verizon’s Fios TV in the area;

"The timetable to reach a global deal to tackle climate change lay in tatters on Wednesday after the UN waived the first deadline of the process laid out at last month’s fractious Copenhagen summit....

Yvo de Boer, the UN’s senior climate change official, admitted that the deadline had in effect been shelved....

The result of Tuesday’s Massachusetts senatorial election, which took away Barack Obama’s super-majority in the Senate, is likely to push climate change further down the US agenda.

It was the latest in a series of setbacks that have caused efforts to push a cap-and-trade bill through the Senate to grind to a halt, making it harder for the White House to participate meaningfully in global climate negotiations.

Instead, the administration has been pressing ahead with steps to limit the US’s carbon emissions through regulation. The Environmental Protection Agency has unveiled new draft rules that would sharply tighten regulations on smog-building pollutants, or ground-level ozone, and has cracked down on greenhouse gas emissions by ruling that carbon dioxide and five other gases pose a danger to health."

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Sports talk 93.7FM debuts in Pittsburgh Feb.15

"Pittsburgh is getting a new sports talk station -- on the FM dial. Starting Feb. 15, Sportsradio 93.7 The Fan will launch with some pretty high-profile call letters: KDKA-FM.

"The Fan is being built for Pittsburgh's sports fans who are simply the best in the country," said Michael Young, senior vice president and market manager for CBS Radio Pittsburgh. "We'll feature an array of opinionated, compelling and very talented

About

Baseball blog & comments on XM MLB 89 and others that "define the daily discourse" for money in order to please Bud Selig or vanity publisher bosses. I agree with Doug Pappas' statement: "Any writer meeting the Commissioner’s standards of ‘good journalism' should be fired.” I'm also a 'Saves Scholar.' Not affiliated with XM.